Jeremy Marshik quit his unfulfilling sales job two years ago and started fishing good lumber out of construction dumpsters around town. He'd find everything from old-growth beams to universal 2-by-4s in like-new condition, haul it to his Kingfield neighborhood on his cargo bike and sell it out of his garage.
Soon "LumberStash" became a full-time business, and Marshik hired three other people in south Minneapolis to sell salvaged lumber out of their homes, too.
"Because my parents are farmers, they always fixed their own stuff and used what they have on hand, and I grew up with that mentality," said Marshik. "I want tons of people to know that this is an option because it's a great way to make money and save lumber from the landfill."
But there's a hitch in Marshik's plan: His business is illegal.
LumberStash violates a number of codes prohibiting people from running lumberyards out of their homes. According to city ordinances, home businesses can only be conducted within an enclosed area, must not be visible to the public and cannot involve retail unless it's closely related to a service, like selling hair products as part of a home salon.
In June, someone contacted 311 to report Marshik: "Property owner is running a lumberyard from driveway. Owner collects salvage lumber and dumps it in his driveway for people to pick through. It started as a few pieces and has escalated to large piles of scrap lumber. Is this allowed or legal per zoning? Can it be stopped?"
The complaint triggered inspections and Marshik was written up. He's since launched a Change.org petition to change city ordinances, arguing that renting a commercial space would make it too expensive to sell the wood cheaply and defeat the scalability of the model, which he hopes more people will adopt to combat wood waste as the region intensifies housing production. The petition has nearly 1,500 signatures.
"The old fences and decks and much of the other lumber we salvage is very useful and somewhat valuable, but you would never find it in a store because it's not worth enough to take up the valuable floor space," he said.
What do the neighbors think?
Alley neighbor Jane Spicer, a retired teacher who makes tote bags out of old billboard material, had nothing but good things to say about LumberStash. "I just think what he's doing is extraordinary and he's been nothing but clean, generous, upbeat and wonderful."
Patrick Cochrane, who lives one house to the south, said he's never been personally inconvenienced by LumberStash nor heard any other neighbors complaining about it. "We're totally supportive of it," he said. "It's a great thing."
Katherine Harter and David Hepenstal, who live two houses to the west, used old-growth lumber from LumberStash to build their raised bed garden and recycled fencing to side their sauna.
"He's educated people, including me," said Harter. "He's showed me the difference between an old-growth piece of lumber and something you'd buy today, how you can look at the end cap and you can see how tight and dense that wood was when it was cut 100 years ago from a 300-year-old tree. I have a new understanding of what we're throwing away."
"His environmental values are sincere," added Hepenstal.
Andrew Bell, who lives immediately across the alley from Marshik, has a full view of LumberStash's operations from his kitchen window. It brings a "smidge" of traffic to the alley, Bell said, but it's low-key enough that he doesn't think anyone driving by could tell it was the home of a small-scale recycler. Once, Marshik taught Bell's son and the rest of his Boy Scout troop how to take apart a wood floor for reuse.
"It would be an entirely different story if Jeremy was a jerk," said Bell. "But it's so opposite that ... He's always asking me things like, 'Hey man, am I waking you up ... or anything like that?' And I'm like, 'No,' and I live right next door."
Jim Heider, who owns Royal Grounds Coffee across the street, has picked up a 2-by-4 from Marshik now and then as needed. He said he had no problem with LumberStash, speculating that if it attracted more people to their neighborhood, it would probably give his coffee shop a boost.
Downstream Changes
After receiving the 311 complaint, the city inspector sent Marshik a notice of violation. Further inspections found no lumber lying out in the open, so the inspector closed the case.
Marshik continues to operate LumberStash, and while there haven't been any more complaints, there could be. He's worried that without a license to run LumberStash legally, others won't have the peace of mind to work with him or adopt his model for themselves.
Marshik's petition asks the City Council to work with LumberStash and find a way to permit it. Council Member Andrea Jenkins, who represents the Eighth Ward where Marshik lives, responded to a message from the Star Tribune but did not follow up to grant an interview.
But the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has taken notice of LumberStash. As far as the agency's Built Environment Sustainability Administrator Melissa Wenzel is concerned, it's an innovative grassroots idea for addressing waste. According to the EPA, she said, we as a nation generate twice as much construction demolition debris as we do household trash, and the majority of that demolition waste bound for landfills and garbage incinerators is in perfectly good condition for reuse.
What Marshik is doing isn't a brand new concept, said Wenzel. Two big nonprofits in the Twin Cities also do measured deconstruction to preserve used building materials for resale: Habitat for Humanity and Better Futures, a workforce development program for people coming out of prison. But LumberStash is unique in how it has spread at a hyperlocal neighborhood level, employing similar-minded people who use their homes to salvage lumber, Wenzel said.
"I think it can make an impact in so many different ways," she said. "Also I find that what Jeremy's model looks like is very scalable in any part of the state, country, globe."
Josh Ferri, a custom builder who owns Lake Side Decking in Minnetonka, has been trying for a long time to move toward more sustainable building practices. He said it used to kill him to have to demolish old decks and dump everything in the trash. But then he found LumberStash about a year ago, and now he pays Marshik to do the disassembling and recycling.
"It allowed me to get ahead of schedule on my demo, because Jeremy's company does the demo for us," Ferri said. "It also gave me and my clients a little peace of mind knowing that everything that was being demoed wasn't ending up in a landfill. It was being recycled and reused and getting another life, which ended up with a third, hidden advantage, which was that it saved us money on dumpster fees and transporting fees."
Ferri said one of his goals for this year is to make his decks 100% recyclable.
